Does the name Tōru Iwatani ring a bell for you? Unless you were an avid gamer in the 1980s, the answer is likely “no”. However, he was actually the original creator of Pac-Man, the star of one of the most popular arcade games of yore. You will likely be even more surprised to learn that Iwatani makes an appearance in the new Adam Sandler movie Pixels. Well, in a sense…
According to the director, Chris Columbus, Iwatani helped his crew to obtain the right to feature Pac-Man in Pixels – and they thanked him by giving him a humorous moment in the finished film. You can watch it in the trailer below, and see what happens when Iwatani approaches his “son”, a giant digitally-recreated Pac-Man who is being used by aliens in a war against Earth.
Now, that Pac-Man obviously isn’t actually Iwatani’s creation – it’s basically a war weapon that simply has a cute Pac-Man mask. Oh, and that isn’t even, strictly speaking, Iwatani. It’s the Japanese-Canadian actor Denis Akiyama, playing the character of Tōru Iwatani.
Still, the character’s exchanges with the big yellow one are genuinely funny – even the real Iwatani thinks so. You can read a lot more about Pixels, which will start screening in US theaters tomorrow, in a big feature article in the upcoming issue of AppleMagazine.
